FATHER'S DAY 2011 / 548

Jason Payne/Postmedia News Service

Journalists have described the disgrace in downtown Vancouver following Game Seven of the Stanley Cup. They are unanimously at a loss to explain why a segment of the large group of hockey fans broke down steel fences, broke commercial windows, overturned and burned vehicles, taunted and fought with police, posed for photos in the midst of the mayhem and disregarded law and responsibility. But city officials and law enforcement must understand and explain it in order to avert it in the future, since this is the second time that such humiliation has smeared the city’s history. The last time being the Seventh Game in 1994. Immediate explanations have been that criminals and anarchists came intentionally to use the occasion to break the law and to create a war zone.

But what kind of people are these? What has created the kind of person who can parade such disregard for what is right and good? Religious people will certainly have an explanation. Others do too.